So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice.

The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't.

Mississippi begins in a lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico

The writer's only responsibility is to his art.

You can't. You just have to.

I don't suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don't have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear.

There were many things I could do for two or three days and earn enough money to live on for the rest of the month. By temperament I'm a vagabond and a tramp.